Frank Lehman

Education Ph.D., Music Theory, Harvard University (2012) B.A., Music Theory/Composition and Philosophy, Brown University (2006)

Biography Professor Lehman serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies and Music Theory Coordinator for the Music Department, as well as sitting on the Academic Awards Committee and acting as a Pre-Major Advisor for incoming freshmen. He sits on the editorial board for several journals, including Music Theory Spectrum and the Journal of the Society for American Music. He has previously served as Secretary for the New England Conference of Music Theorists and the Vice Chair for the Film & Multimedia Interest Group at the Society for Music Theory.

His research centers on the structure and cultural background of film music. He has published his work on music and the moving in leading journals and edited volumes, as well as online in public musicology venues like Musicology Now and Mashable. His first monograph, entitled Hollywood Harmony, is slated to be published by Oxford University Press in late 2017/early 2018. This book examines the way that music in American cinema structures a filmgoer's experience of both narrative and temporality, and it focuses especially on the evocation of the affect of wonder through non-functional 'pantriadic' chromaticism. He is also beginning work on a second monograph, on the topic of style and structure in the music of John Williams.

Research Interests Film music, chromaticism, Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century art music, ambient music, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, transformation theory, and music aesthetics.

Major Publications

"Film-as-Concert Music and the Formal Implications of Cinematic Listening" (Music Analysis, forthcoming 2018)

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of American Cinema ( Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2018)